$4.17m Project For Nadi

ADB funds pilot project for town

The town­ship of Nadi has been cho­sen to be the pilot project ap­ply­ing space-based tech­nol­ogy on in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy to strengthen dis­as­ter re­silience. The project is funded by the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank (ADB) and im­ple­mented by Asian In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy.

“We will utilise space tech­nol­ogy such as re­mote cen­sor­ing or GPS sys­tem as­sis­tance to cre­ate base maps, haz­ard maps and utilise ICT and such as other oper­a­tion like mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion or other oper­a­tion sys­tem to col­lect in­for­ma­tion for dis­as­ter man­age­ment,” Mr Ya­hata said.

He said the to­tal bud­get of $4.17 mil­lion ($US2 mil­lion) would fund the project for the other coun­ties cho­sen in­clud­ing Ar­me­nia (Cen­tral West Asia), Bangladesh (South Asia), Philip­pines (South East Asia) and Fiji (Pa­cific sub re­gion).

“This project is not for in­fra­struc­ture devel­op­ment project but it is ca­pac­ity devel­op­ment project, of course we will pro­vide some equip­ment like data man­age­ment server,” he said. He said the project would be com­pleted by March 2017. District Of­fi­cer Nadi Osea Ravukivuki said, “This work­shop is a fo­rum to in­tro­duce a uni­form ap­proach and method­ol­ogy to be ap­plied here in the pilot site Nadi that can also be repli­cated across the coun­try later.” He said this would be a boost be­cause Nadi would be a city by next year. Red Cross Di­rec­tor Gen­eral Filipe Nain­oca said “This is a very im­por­tant thing that we are do­ing. This gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ties to as­sist us to be more re­silient dur­ing times of dis­as­ter.” Edited by Ru­si­ate Mataika